I remember making prank calls. That was a lot of fun. Up until the advent of caller id. However, getting them was better.

When I was kid, about 8 years old, my family had our phone number put in the phone book. I don’t recall the reason for us being unlisted for so long, I never asked. So, I remember, upon hearing that we were published in the phone book, thinking we were now famous. As if having your name in the phone book was an honor of some kind. However, it just made us easier to find for the pranksters.

I wasn’t allowed to answer the phone. I enjoyed it, but I’d always end up wanting to chat and joke with the person calling, which would invariably make them hang up. Someone would call for my mom and I’d jokingly tell them that she was passed out, drunk on the front porch. I speculate that I ruined some job offers for my parents at least 10 times as a kid.

Because I was forbidden to answer the phone, it made it that much more appealing. Everytime the phone rang, I felt something stir inside me. I HAD to answer it. Luckily for me, my mother was asleep upstairs and my aunt and grandmother had gone out shopping, effectively leaving me alone in the living room to do as I wished. Heh heh.

The phone rang, and I answered it, so excited I nearly dropped the phone. I heard a gruff, male voice. Slightly slurred speech. “Hello?” I answered.

“Tell me what you’re wearing, sweetie…” the prankster said. He thought I was a woman.

“Umm, ninja turtle jammies. How about you?”

“I’m wearing nothing but a smile.” This raised some questions for my young mind.

“You can’t wear a smile. You’re not very smart.”

“Oh you can wear lots of things. Know what I’m doing right now?” he said.

“No. Did you see Transformers today? It was great!” My short attention span actually worked in my favor at times.

“What the he—is this a kid?” he barked into the phone.

“No. I’m Mike. I’m a grown-up. And you sound stupid.”

Later in life, I looked forward to prank callers. They’re lots of fun, if you know how to handle them. It can be very therapeutic.

After a horrible breakup, I was struggling with trying to go to sleep one night. About 2 am, my phone rang. I answered, and some guy, sounding profoundly drunk, starting yelling at me, calling me Ashley.

“Ashley! You there?” he screamed at me.

“Uh…who is this? I think you’ve got the wrong number, pal.” I yawned.

“…Oh I’ve got the right number. Where’s Ashley, rat-face? You bonking her?”

This was news to me. But, I saw the chance to have some fun. Plus, this guy called me rat-face. “Yep. Sure am. She told me she needed a real man.”

I could actually hear his blood pressure rising. “Where are you?! Tell me where you are so I can kick your ass!”

I gave him the address of a bar in the middle of town. “This is where I am, you candy ass. I’ll be the one wearing a Snoopy T-shirt.”

“I’ll stomp a mudhole in your ass for taking Ashley away from me.” He was literally screaming at this point.

“Yeah, why don’t you come down here and do something about it?” It took everything I had not to laugh.

“I WILL!” He hangs up.

I assumed, depending on where he was, that it wouldn’t take long for him to realize I wasn’t there. I threw in the Snoopy T-shirt as a safeguard. I can’t imagine a grown man wearing such a thing, so he wouldn’t attack a total stranger. Plus, he sounded so drunk that I doubted he could actually make it there.

He called me back about an hour later, asking for directions. Still drunk, still screaming. I called him a pansy and he started going off on me. I no longer had the energy to perpetuate this joke, but still wanted to irritate him for being a nuisance, so I set my phone down, put him on speakerphone, and used it as background noise while I got up and made a microwave pizza.

He ranted for close to 10 minutes. Finally, I turned off speakerphone and told him goodnight. Then I hung up.

He called 6 more times that night before I turned my phone off. He left scathing, threatening messages, but would end each one with “Take care now.”

I never heard from him again, so I guess he patched things up with “Ashley”, or, if she was smart, she told him to get lost.

Long story short—I love prank callers. They get me through tough times.
 
 

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